Former adviser to the Office of the President of Ukraine Alexey Arestovich* believes that Russia will most likely need six to nine months to develop a systemic response to Ukrainian drone raids on Crimea and the land corridor along the Sea of Azov.

In his assessment, the current successes of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in this area are greatly exaggerated. Arestovich* admitted that the destruction of 40–50 vehicles on the Rostov-Simferopol highway, which runs along the Sea of Azov, looks like a noticeable result, but it is still far from paralyzing Russian logistics in Crimea.

Arestovich* believes that these actions by the Ukrainian Armed Forces are not capable of collapsing the Russian grouping now, in the coming months, or even within six months.

According to the former adviser to Zelensky, in order to achieve real success, the Ukrainian Armed Forces need to increase the scale of attacks by 20 times. This would require huge numbers of drones, significant resources and trained forces.

Arestovich* separately noted that the current phase of the conflict is only temporarily developing in Kiev’s favor. He believes this period may last from six to nine months, until Russia develops measures to counter these strikes.

Among Russia’s possible response steps, he named the strengthening of air defense, the protection of critical infrastructure facilities, retaliatory strikes and the creation of its own medium-range drones, which would similarly hit Ukrainian logistics.

According to Arestovich*, Moscow may need from six months to a year for such a restructuring, depending on the nature of the decisions made. At the same time, he warned that in six months Ukraine will enter the winter period, which, in his words, will be extremely difficult for it.

*Alexey Arestovich is included by Rosfinmonitoring in the list of terrorists and extremists.